Future Man (Season 3)

I recently received news that an app I like, Job Spotter, is shutting down, likely permanently.  It was the one app that I had made the most money with.  I was even looking forward to using it once we could all go back out again.  Alas, it’s not to be.  I’ll get over it, of course.  There will be other apps I can use to get a little extra money.  I’ve even had this happen when Epinions shut down.

It’s sort of the same with finding out that a TV show you like won’t be coming back.  You feel that the show could have gone on for years.  Sometimes, it’s the right call.  It’s better to go out on top,

When I heard that this would be the last season of Future Man, it wasn’t that much of a shock.  Each season, I had to wonder what they’d be doing for the next set of episodes.  The show is known for having some wild humor.

The first season dealt with saving the future of humanity from biotics.  Josh Futturman became the savior of humanity by being the first to beat a video game.  Wolf and Tiger came from the future to enlist him, which he reluctantly agreed to.

In the second season, it became clear that the problems were a bit bigger.  Biotics still existed.  It was a whole new timeline, yet little had changed.  It was eventually discovered that messing with time travel that many times created a lot of timelines with a lot of problems.

The third season picks up where the second season left off.  Josh, Tiger and Wolf are still held prisoner by Susan in the year 3491.  For crimes against time, they’re sentenced to the DieCathalon, where they’ll fight all sorts of creatures.  Josh actually manages to escape, leading the trio on a whole new adventure.

The third season isn’t as reliant on cultural references as the first two seasons.  It’s also shorter.  (There are 8 episodes instead of 13.)  There are really three main acts.  First is Josh leading the escape from the future.  The second is the trio running through time and being caught for introducing an anachronism.  Finally, Susan offers them freedom in exchange for leading him to Haven.

Haven is what it all comes down to.  It’s a place outside of time and space where many historical figures and celebrities exist.  Gandhi and Jesus are there, as well as Picasso and Marilyn Monroe.  To make matters worse, time is collapsing in on itself.  If something isn’t done, all timelines will be sucked into Haven.

This puts the trio on the offensive rather than the defensive.  The show manages to pull this off without really changing the dynamic of the characters.  It’s exactly the kind of ending that the show deserves.  Everything is resolved.  We even get to see what happens to them.

I suppose a fourth season or a spinoff series is possible.  While the vortex responsible for Haven and time travel was destroyed, there’s no reason it couldn’t be recreated.  We could also have a show with just Wolf or Josh, showing their exploits after the show ended.  Susan was even shown trying to drive a bus.  We could have something with Susan and his family roaming the country.  (Susan is a man’s name in the far future.)

Then again, maybe it’s best to leave it alone.  The show is great as is.  There’s plenty of crude humor to go around without being offensive.  Each character comes to a level of awareness necessary to complete their respective story arc.  I think to have a fourth season of Future Man would be a bad call.  It would be better to do something with all or mostly new characters, even if it’s set in the same reality.

That being said, the show’s not going to be for everyone.  By this point, if you’ve seen the first two seasons, you probably have already finished the third season.  If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, what are you waiting for?

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Future Man (Season 2)

Future Man was one of those TV shows that probably could have done well with just one season.  While a second season was implied, it was a complete story that could easily have left you wondering.  Josh Futturman was a guy that was trying to beat an unbeatable game called Biotic Wars.  When he becomes the first person to do so, he’s visited by the game’s two main characters, Tiger and Wolf.  It turns out that the game was a recruiting tool.

The entire first season was a series of in-jokes and references to time travel stories and their tropes.  Over various trips, little changes and what does change is usually for the worse.  The season ends with Josh in jail, having ruined his life.  He doesn’t mind so much, as he seems to have saved humanity from Dr. Elias Kronish‘s cure for herpes.

Season 2 begins with Josh visited by Tiger and Wolf again, only to realize that it’s all an illusion.  Humanity wasn’t saved, only it was the actions of Dr. Stu Camillo that did us all in.  Josh must reunite with Tiger and Wolf to once again try to save humanity.

There’s a similar dynamic with the trio.  Instead of Tiger and Wolf being the fish out of water, Josh is also out of his element.  The entire season takes place in the future, leaving the present-day world behind.  (All but the last episode take place in 2162.)  Tiger and Wolf still look down on Josh, even though he makes important contributions.   Names in the new future are based on function rather than being named for an animal.  Wolf finds out that his counterpart makes wheels and is called Torque.  (Tiger’s counterpart is named Ty-Anne.)

Those that haven’t seen the first season may want to start there.  This isn’t a series where you can pick it up anywhere.  It’s also meant for people who are familiar with science-fiction movies.  The season finale alone makes light of all the divergent timelines that the trio has created.  (It would appear that changing events doesn’t erase the original set of events.)  Much of it will seem ridiculous, but this is meant to be a comedy.

There’s a part of me that wonders how long the series can keep this up.  The second season does set up a third.  I’m very curious to see what that would look like.  Could they keep it going for a fourth or fifth?  Possibly.  There’s plenty of science-fiction to parody.  The overall stories are well-planned and obstacles seem natural.  It’s also not concerned with having to use all of the characters.  As with the first season, episodes may focus on Wolf or Josh.

I will warn you that it is for adults.  If you’ve seen the first season, there won’t be any surprises.  Much of it will come across as juvenile.  There are a lot of sexual humor, some of it even Freudian.  Scatological humor isn’t unheard of in the second season.  You get some of it in the trailer I’m including, but not all of it.  (Soiling oneself is used as a test to see if you’re a biotic or not.)  If you made it all the way through Season One, you should be fine with Season Two.

IMDb page

Future Man (Season 1)

If you watch enough time-travel movies, there are certain things that would be good, like stopping Hitler before he becomes the leader of Germany.  If any of us invented a time machine, that’s probably the first thing we’d look in to.  The problem is that there’s no promise that this would be effective.  There were a lot of other factors at play, so there’s no guarantee that someone much worse wouldn’t have come along and done the same thing.

Such is the problem that Wolf and Tiger have.  They live in a world where genetically modified people known as biotics rule.  Regular humans have no hope except with time travel.  They’ve traced the Biotics’ origin to Doctor Elias Kronish,  All they need is a savior.

What does it take to become a savior?  That’s what Josh “Future Man” Futturman finds out when he beats Biotic Wars, a game that no one else has beaten.  Wolf and Tiger show up in his room to recruit Josh into their war.  You see, in their time, warriors play video games for training.  What they don’t realize is that Josh thought it was just a game.  Yes, in a giant nod to The Last Starfighter, they used a video game as a recruitment tool.

The first episode should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.  There are plenty of references to major time-travel movies, like Terminator and Back to the Future.  There are all manner of sexual situations, like Tiger and Wolf having sex to relieve tension.  This is not a TV series you want to watch with your children.  Or your parents, for that matter.

The series has 13 half-hour episodes, meaning that it’s very easy to binge watch.  I was worried that the series might drag, as several other series have.  This isn’t a problem.  In fact, the series was originally developed as a movie.  It was eventually realized that they needed more time to tell the whole story.

Part of this is that they have several setbacks.  Josh is insistent on not killing Kronish whereas Tiger and Wolf would simply kill him as a baby.  Many of Josh’s attempts result in either failure or making the situation worse. I kind of wonder why Tiger and Wolf needed Josh in the first place, since it should be relatively easy to get that information.  It’s pure chance that Josh works at Kronish’s research facility.

It seems like much of the plot revolves around paying homage to various tropes of the genre.  In terms of time travel, very little is original.  Josh points out that killing Kronish at an early age is the central plot of the first Terminator movie.  There is also an episode that loosely resembles Back to the Future.  This isn’t to say that it’s not entertaining.  Wolf has an instant attraction to pickles and eventually takes up cooking, which leads to an interesting episode.

The series is at least maybe a little more realistic if that can be a thing with science fiction.  The amount of culture shock experienced by Tiger and Wolf is believable.  I also think most people in Josh’s situation would also teeter between wanting to go on an adventure and not waning to screw things up royally.

It did end up being a fun series.  (Yes, I know I’m a few months late in reviewing it.)  I don’t want to ruin the ending, but it looks like there will be a second 13-episode season.  I’ll be looking forward to it.


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